The High School Years - 9th Grade

Homeschooling high school. It's at this point when many homeschooled teens return to the public school system. In talking to the parents of these teens, it appears that the teens are not looking to learn so much more in a public setting or that they are not confident in their parents ability to provide learning opportunities to them in their high school years. It seems to be all about the 'experience'. Now contrast this to the fact that many public high school parents find the most worrisome thing about high school is the 'experience' and what they are being exposed to on campus. It's a confusing and frustrating time for all.

In California, students of high school age are allowed to attend community college. We had observed other families in our homeschool group take advantage of this option and that is what we decided to pursue.

For my daughters' 9th grade year, we stayed with the public charter and at 14 years old, my daughters took their first college class. At home, I taught two different year long classes to my daughters and their friends: English and World History. I also did a mini-study in physics and my girls took several classes through our homeschool support group. The class that they chose to begin with at community college was a counseling course. It was described as an extended orientation to what college has to offer. It was a great first class to take for a few reasons. It was taught by a counselor, who is still my daughters' college counselor to this day. It was also a hybrid class, which meant that it was taught in class and on-line, so my girls were able to familiarize themselves with how to take a class using the college's on-line classroom program. The class also had them visit several places on campus, so they had the opportunity to get aquainted with the college and on top of everything else, it was transferable to university level. The class was only 1 college unit and was only once a week for 6 weeks, but it was a perfect introduction into college classes. The experience gave them confidence and it gave me solace about my young daughters being on the college campus.

The second semester of 9th grade my daughters took three classes at the community college for a total of 5 college units. They took two computer classes and a P.E. class.

The tricky part about my girls' 9th grade year was sticking with the charter. State and federal education laws were making it more and more restrictive to homeschool high school through the public charter. It seems that there was much room for interpretation in elementary and middle school with the charter, but high school was much more controlled. The charter we were with worked with me in my girls' 9th grade year. I had to submit detailed class descriptions of the classes I taught so that the charter could approve them and feel confident about granting high school credit for what I was teaching. There was give and take to the process, but in the end, my classes were approved and went on their high school transcript. At the end of their 9th grade year, the charter informed it's high school students that they would no longer approve 'created' curriculum beginning next year. Instead, they designed several curriculum options that high school students could choose from for the various subjects. It was also decided that as a high school student, there were specific classes that had to be taught in specific years that you could not deviate from. And it remained a policy that high school students could take a maximum of 6 college units per semester. With my daughters already taking a 5 unit semester, I could see that they would be ready to take more units in a semester next year and I didn't want the charter to limit their choices. All of this led to a 'parting of the ways' for us from our charter. No hard feelings. It's just that the charter could no longer work with our eclectic lifestyle.

~Debbie in So. Cal.